Here we go. Welcome to the many and intimidating tanks of Kuromorimine Girls High School.
Tiger I
Barring the Sturmtiger (thankfully), Kuromorimine pretty much fielded all of the Tiger variants. All of the photos in this post come from the Bovington Tank Museum (the collection at Yekaterinburg was attached to a memorial to the Great Patriotic War and didn’t have any German vehicles anywhere that I could see). So let’s start at the beginning with Maho’s personal tank, a Tiger I:
(This is apparently the only Tiger I in running order in the world).
And from that moment, here’s Maho’s Tiger I:
Tiger II
Meanwhile Maho’s subcommander Erika was running around in a Tiger II:
Speaking of Erika, here’s her first encounter with the annoyances of dealing with the fact that Miho is just downright sneaky and devious when it comes to tactics:
In fact Erika you would do well to listen to Darjeeling. Because Miho certainly did:
Elefant
The Kuromorimine team included an Elefant, and this photo really doesn’t capture how imposing the damn thing is when you see it in person (but it’s the best I’ve got):
(This example actually belongs to U.S. Army Ordnance Museum but was on loan to Bovington to enable a single display of the entire Tiger family. Minus the Sturmtiger)
And here’s the Rabbits at the start of their quote “Super Strategy Plan”:
Mind you I shouldn’t be too hard on them given that Miho is running operation Teasy Tease at this thpoint
Jagdtiger
Another of the fixed gun vehicles fielded by Kuromorimine was the Jagdtiger:
And from slightly later in the episode here’s the Rabbits starting their heroic face off against the Jagdtiger (that doesn’t end quite so well for them):
Panzer III
Moving on from the Tigers, you might have blinked and missed it but there was a Panzer III scouting for the Maus (see below) in the TV Series. Bovington had one, kinda, sorta:
And here’s the (rather longer barrelled) Panzer III leading Oarai towards the Maus:
Panther
There were a number of Panthers in the line up:
And here are a couple of Panthers from the end of episode 11:
Jagdpanther
Another of the fixed gun vehicles fielded was a Jagdpanther, seen here with the Hetzer in the background.
Speaking of Jagdpanthers and Hetzers, here’s the Jagdpanther that the Turtles disabled the first time attempting to rejoin the fray:
The thing is though, I’m looking at the position of the damaged wheel on the left side, and comparing it to the left side of Bovington’s Jagdtiger and wondering if there’s an in-joke going on here:
Jagdpanzer IV
I don’t think I saw one of these. Certainly the Wikipedia entry for the Jagdpanzer IV doesn’t show one of the survivors being at Bovington. I’m not certain of my identification, but I think this was one of the Jagdpanzer IVs in episode 11:
Maus
No, I didn’t see the Maus either. And here it is whilst Hetzers gonna Hetz:
Conclusion
And that’s it for the cast (well the tanks at least) of the Girls Und Panzer TV series. I don’t have (legal) streaming versions of the OAVs and Der Film, so I can’t really get screenshots from those. Still, have an Italian L3/L4 tankette from the Australian War Memorial as an omake:
All of the photographs in this set of posts were taken by me on my Grand Tour, so please check that out if you’re amused by my photographic efforts.
Here’s the other posts in this series:
Question of the Post: Do you have a favourite tank in the Girls Und Panzer cast? If so, which is it?
The final defeat of the Maus is on of my favorite moments from the series…
I imagine that a lot of people cheer at that. 🙂
One of my top moments is the bit just before the Kuromorimine match when one of the girls Miho saved thanks her and the scene cuts to Yukari’s shit eating “I TOLD YOU SO” grin. It’s one of those glorious character moments that really makes the series sing.
Sadly the trip didn’t go anywhere near Kubinka which is where the sole extant* Maus is.
*For values of extant = body of one of the two prototypes, turret of the other.
Here’s a fun fact: you mentioned in part 1 about the lack of surviving Porsche Tigers, but in fact after the design was rejected, all of the prototype chassis were eventually converted to Elefants. So that Elefant actually is the closest thing to a P.T. that you could find.
I have two favorite tanks from Garupan. One is the StuG III, both because I think it’s one of Oarai’s best-looking tanks and because if I were to join one of these tank crews, a team full of history nerds would be my natural home. The other is the BT-42 that the Finnish team ran in the movie. It was a terrible tank IRL, but the movie made it look really cool with the maneuvers its team was able to pull off.
Good choices both! I suspect that Der Film really stretched the capabilities of several tanks beyond believability, with the Finnish tank being possibly the worst offender in that regard.
As for the Stug III, the Finnish version I saw seemed relatively stumpy in length so I do wonder if it got stretched in length in the anime.
Finally re the PTs and the Elefants, that’s good to know, thanks for that!
Nah, worst offender was the L3 being able to “skip” across the water. An L3 might be light for a tank, but it still weighs 2.5 tons and isn’t watertight – it’s not going anywhere in the water except right to the bottom (and those two Anzio girls in the OVA ain’t pushing one back on its wheels, either). At least the real life BT-42 actually could be driven without treads.
Duly noted. 😄
I wasn’t a huge fan of the Anzio OAV, it ruined a couple of key jokes from the TV series IMO. First it gave the Ducks several kills which subverted them being utterly awesome without getting kills, and second it ruined the gag of skipping over the Italians because everybody did. 🙂
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